I Thought You Were Sleeping
by Dragonfly Zero
Summary: Whilst tracking an unknown predator, Jenny gets attacked, and Nick realises something... Nick/Jenny. Chapter 2 finally added.
1. Chapter 1

I Thought You Were Sleeping

Couplings: Jenny/Nick

Genre: Angst/Romance

Spoilers: Sort of for 2.4

Other: A cracky thing that I got inspired to do at 1 am on the third of May. Don't ask why. If you wish this to continue, there's that little button on the left to press :D

To be quite honest, this story came out a sentence that my mum said when she came into my room. She said 'Oh, I thought you were asleep.'

And that, as they say, was that.

* * *

_I do swear that I'll always be there.  
I'd give anything and everything and I will always care.  
Through weakness and strength, happiness and sorrow,  
for better for worse, I will love you with  
every beat of my heart…  
From this moment life has begun  
From this moment you are the one  
Right beside you is where I belong  
From this moment on_

Shania Twain – From This Moment

* * *

Never in a million years had he ever imagined that this would happen to her. Not her. She had too much common sense. She was too cautious. Too obedient. Too _innocent_.

But he held her, broken in his arms, and realised that he'd been too damn relenting in letting her go off alone. He was being punished. He'd lost her _again_.

The gun she had been using was cast to one side, spent of bullets. The creature she'd been fighting was long gone, having done its work. He dark hair was stained with crimson, sticking together in clumps because of the drying blood. Her chest was shuddering, as she tried to slow her shallow breaths, prolong her life for as long as she could.

He'd found her this way. They'd been in a warehouse, the five of them, and they'd split into their normal groups. The two younger ones would go together, and the older men and her would go the other way. At least, that was how it was meant to be. As usual, the two youngsters had pranced off somewhere, and the others were going to go the opposite direction. But she had _resisted _his authority. His 'let's go this way'. She'd had a 'good feeling' about going a different way, and had insisted that he let her go alone. After a couple of short arguments, he'd agreed, fool that he was.

He and his best friend, they'd meandered down the dozens of shelves of furniture, jumping at every sound they heard. Yet they found nothing. No trace of this…creature they'd been sent after. Not even a hair. A single paw-mark in the dust.

Then there'd been the gunshot, followed by the scream. That terrible, gut-wrenching, unmistakable howl of an animal in acute pain. He'd looked up. It sounded so feral, so inhuman, that he _knew _that someone had got the creature. The cry had gone on for a long, long time, echoing around the warehouse, bouncing off the concrete walls like a clarinet solo in a concert hall. His best friend had turned, and they'd exchanged a glance. His friend would go and check on the younger two, whilst he went to make sure she was okay.

It hadn't taken him long to find her, after he and his best friend had parted ways. She was lying like a beautiful swan on a brand new Slumberland bed, one that hadn't even been stored in a crate. She was in a half-foetal position, her back to him. She was asleep.

"Didn't see you as the kind to sleep on the job, Jenny Lewis." He'd said, light and joking. There'd been no response, and he assumed that he'd offended her somehow. It was a regular occurrence, and he supposed that his next move would be to grovel on his knees for her forgiveness.

He'd come closer to her, and got the distinct impression that there was something seriously wrong. Her breathing seemed to be laboured, and as his shadow fell over her prone form, he heard her whimper softly. He rounded the bed, and to his utmost horror, he realised that she definitely _wasn't_ sleeping. Her hand was pressed to her blouse, which was flooded with scarlet. The scarlet was leaking through her spread fingers, dying them red.

"Nick…"

She'd spoken his name with a whisper, making it sound like a plea. A plea for what, he wondered briefly. A plea for his help? A plea to call an ambulance? A plea for him to end this all now?

Slowly, he'd taken her hand, waiting for her to push him away. She hadn't. Her palm felt cool and sweaty in his. He'd sat on the bed, not knowing what to do. Was she dying? What had attacked her?

He watched her as her eyelids slid closed, squeezing tight through a flash of agony, willing it to go away. A tear trickled out from under her lashes, sliding down her cheek. Feeling distressed, he wiped it away gently with the pad of his thumb, stroking it across her skin as lightly as he could. He watched as her chest heaved once, wracked with pain.

"Nick…don't let go of me…please…" She asked. He nodded. There was no need for him to say anything. He shifted himself, and eased her into his arms, feeling her body heat, smelling her musky perfume. It filled his nostrils, leaving every other scent as bland and boring as mud. It was like heroin. The impact might take a long time to kick in, or it might be immediate. For Nick Cutter, it took a second for him to be hooked on Jenny Lewis.

Her hazel eyes, usually gleaming with her superiority, were scared and desperate. He wanted to fight her fear, stop her desperation. In the words of that stupid song, he wanted to _kiss away the pain_.

The blood had slowed, and he didn't know whether this worried him or not. He cradled her to him, suddenly realising what it had been like for Connor to lose Abby to the Mer. How he had felt, why the normally mild student had been so furious, so adamant that he was going to find her.

He was shaken from these puzzling thoughts by none other than the rest of the team. Stephen appeared first, with Connor and Abby in tow. Stephen muttered a curse; Connor stood frozen in shock and Abby gave a gasp.

"Jenny!"

Jenny hadn't noticed them. She wouldn't, seeing as she was facing away from them, her head on Nick's chest. She closed her eyes again, pressing her hand against her blouse weakly. Nick rocked her gently as she whimpered. Stephen, always the cool-headed one, was already on the phone to someone. Lester? The ambulance? Nick didn't know. He was barely aware of the others, so wrapped up in comforting Jenny.

She opened her eyes, and Nick hesitantly took the hand that was pressing down on her wound. He pulled her blouse slightly, searching for the mark. It wasn't hard to find.

Jenny's attacker had been brutal. The skin between stomach and chest, around her diaphragm area, had been sliced almost surgically, cold and calculated. Nick cringed when he saw it. He didn't dare touch it, in case he irritated it or made it worse for her. The blood was still bubbling up from underneath, like lava in a volcano.

"That's…quite a nasty scratch you've got there." He tried to smile, to bring a sense of hilarity to the whole situation, but he couldn't even convince himself. Jenny laughed slightly, blood, that precious liquid, trickling down the side of her mouth. It almost made him cry.

"Ambulance will be here in five minutes." Stephen said quietly, cutting into their private bubble. Nick traced Jenny's face with his eyes, taking everything in, realising that she was very likely to die. He didn't want to remember her this way, all vulnerable and pale. She wouldn't want him to. He'd remember her as vibrant, over-your-head-and-out-of-your-league Jenny.

"Please, Jenny, don't die…" He told her. She looked drowsy now, her eyes half-closed with the exhaustion of keeping them open.

She gazed at him searchingly, as though she wanted him to say something, do something, anything that would suddenly make it all better. Nick watched her, lost in her eyes, and suddenly, he wanted to taste her lips on his. His mind flickered to her fiancé, that weird man he'd seen in her house. The young, effeminate-looking one.

Sod it.

He knew that this might very well be the last chance he would ever have with Jenny. In a twisted way, he felt possessive of her, as though after this, she was his woman. Not this morons.

He bent over her, mouth grazing the tip of her nose, before landing on her lips. It took her a second, but she soon followed his lead, kissing him back weakly. He could taste vanilla, a hint of mint, and the metallic tang of her blood.

They heard the telltale whine of a siren in the background, but to his ears, it sounded far, far away. Even when he heard the paramedics, and he raised himself from her, it still seemed part of another world. One that he didn't belong to, that she, even in her state, didn't belong to.

He watched them as they manoeuvred her onto a stretcher, one of them checking her pulse, her temperature, before wheeling her off. He followed. He remembered her plea, one of the first things she'd said to him when he'd found her. She hadn't wanted him to let go of her. God help him, he hadn't wanted to let go of her. The paramedics seemed to be a little panicky about her condition. They'd put her in the ambulance, and slid a drip and blood syringe into her arm. There was a makeshift bandage over her cut, and she was hooked up to an oxygen mask.

"What on Earth attacked her?" One of the paramedics asked Nick, as he stood by and watched. The paramedic had been a part of the ARC hospital service for a couple of months, but he had never seen such a clean slash.

"I honestly have no idea." He stated truthfully. They hadn't known what they were tracking, only that it was a predatorial mammal, "Is she going to be okay?"

"It's hard to say. At this second, I'd say she has a 20 chance of survival. No major organs were hit, but she's lost an awful lot of blood." The paramedic admitted. He wasn't one to mince words. He stepped up into the ambulance.

"Are there any relatives we can contact?" He asked.

Nick thought. He saw her prat of a fiancé in his mind with his grinning face, and wiped it immediately.

"Nobody." He said, feeling a tad guilty, "I'll come though." He offered, a little too quickly. The paramedic nodded.

"Hop in, professor."


	2. Chapter 2

I Thought You Were Sleeping: Chapter 2

Jenny/Nick

Angst/Romance

_Spoilers:_ Sort of for 2.4

_Other:_ Four lovely reviews, so I've decided to continue this. There's nothing I hate more than an unfinished story. This chapter is dedicated to all of you, but especially **GPR** whose fics I adore. This fanfic will most likely finish at 3 chapters, if I can get it into gear and start working harder.

As in my Conby story, I'm not entirely sure of the hospital details.

_Disclaimer:_ I don't own Primeval, and/or any of the characters associated with it. That privilege belongs to Impossible Productions. I do, however, own Martin Schlaussman, but who really wants him?

* * *

The ambulance ride was a blur to Nick. All he could remember was holding tight to Jenny's hand, soaked in a cold sweat, whilst medics and doctors fussed around them, checking her temperature, her responses, giving her injections every so often. His grey-blue gaze took nothing in as his eyes stared into the middle distance. Only the feel of Jenny's palm in his, of her breathing, which seemed loud even above the noise of the ambulance. From the privacy of the black-tinted back windows, he could vaguely see his own university 4x4 following the ambulance. He supposed that Stephen was driving, with Connor and Abby in the back.

Then they were there. More staff rushed out of the accident and emergency door, flying to the original crew's aid. They transported Jenny out on a stretcher, tugging her limp hold on Nick loose. He made as if to go after her, but was abruptly stopped by one of the medics.

"She's going straight into surgery." The medic told him, turning to leave, to go and help the others. He looked back over his shoulder, and gave what he thought was an encouraging look. To Nick, it looked faker than a tin of polkadot paint.

"We'll do all we can for her. You can wait with your colleagues inside the building."

The last part sounded almost patronising, that stupid mother-knows-best voice usually reserved for teachers talking to naughty teenagers.

He was left standing there as the medics took Jenny, his Jenny Lewis, from him. He heard another car pull up behind him, but didn't turn to see who it was. He was rewarded with his answer a few seconds later, when a small, blonde head arrived beside him, quickly followed by two taller dark heads. The four of them were silent for a while, Nick's three team-mates absorbing his pain.

"She'll be fine." Stephen said in a low voice, although Nick could tell that he didn't really believe it. How on Earth could she be fine, after sustaining a wound that gruesome?

As Nick stared at the closed hospital doors, silently willing them to open and bring Jenny back to him, he felt a hand on his shoulder. With a sense of quiet dread, he turned, and looked into the face of the one man who he really didn't want to see. Sir James Lester looked into his eyes, his own steely gaze even.

"Cutter. Come with me." He ordered. His voice was quiet, that superior tone evident in the way he said Nick's name.

Nick followed Lester up through the levels of the ARC, his mind far away from the scenery. Stephen, Connor and Abby all followed, loyal to their leader. They did, however, stop outside Lester's open door, and let Nick continue alone. Lester sat down at his desk, with the air of a man who was comfortable in his own territory; who knew that this was his jungle, and he was king of it. Nick was determined not to feel intimidated.

"How did this happen?" Lester asked, immediately getting to the point. There was no point messing around, each waiting for the other to bring up the subject. Cutter wasn't the sort of person that Lester would exchange pleasantries with anyway.

"I…We were careless. We split up." Nick said, feeling only a dull sense of inevitability and guilt. It was his fault that she was dying. His fault that she was down there, on a cold metal, bad excuse for comfort, having her insides prodded and pulled. It made him feel sick just to think of it. Lester did not look satisfied with his answer. His eyes were glittering with his anger.

"And now she's lying down there dead?" He asked coldly. He might as well have starting jabbing Nick with a thousand pointed fingers. You did it. It's your fault. You could have stopped it.

"She's not dead!" Nick burst out. He couldn't hold it in. Then quieter, "She's not…dead." It was a déjà vu of what Connor had been like after the Mer took Abby. Lester obviously noticed the similarities too, acknowledging them with a raised eyebrow.

"I always knew you were reckless, Cutter, but never anything like this." Lester continued with his admonishments, making Nick feel smaller and smaller. He glanced over his shoulder, where Stephen shrugged at him. Abby was biting her nails to stumps and Connor had an arm around her shoulder, murmuring comfortingly in her ear. They were all worried, and it was _his_ fault.

"I should never have entrusted you with the lives of a team. I thought you were more responsible than this." Lester sounded disappointed and, Nick realised, quietly upset. Lester put his head in his hands.

"Dear Lord…" He sighed quietly, and Nick recognised the expression on his face. Lester looked tired. Extremely tired. After a brief moment, he looked up again, ready to resume his reprimands.

"From now, you will not leave the ARC without my say-so. While on your missions, you will be accompanied by one or more soldier with no exceptions. Disobey these rules, and I will not hesitate to fire you. I must say, you're getting off rather lightly, considering." There was no hint of amusement in his face.

Lester bent his head again, picked up a Parker fountain pen and began to write again, muttering to himself to remember his half-finished sentence on the page. Nick took this as dismissal, and turned to leave. As he reached his friends, they said nothing. They had heard what Lester had said, and that was enough. Nick raised his eyes to the ceiling.

Please…if there is a God…let Jennifer Lewis live…

He hadn't prayed in ages. Not since he had been doing his Palaeontology degree and that question about Horseshoe crabs and their likeness to ancient crustaceans had come up. He thought that this occasion was so much more important than that.

The four of them milled around in the team's chill-out zone, a small room connected to the gym, painted pale blue with dark blue furniture. Stephen paced around in front of the turned-off television. Abby and Connor sat on one of the small sofas, Abby's head on Connor's shoulder for comfort. He patted her shoulder, rubbing it gently. Soon, Nick joined them, slumping down onto one of the cerulean chairs, and putting his head in his hands. His hair was even more ruffled than normal, the dirty-blonde strands sticking up in tufts. Stephen looked at him, really looked at him. Not in the same way as Lester had a this-is-all-your-fault way, but almost pityingly. He knew what it was like to lose a woman, but not in this way. And despite the words of comfort he'd given, he too, thought it was hopeless.

The door to the chill room opened, and all four heads snapped up in unison. Nick got to his feet again when a man, dressed in the long, white gown of a surgeon, stepped into the room. His face was unreadable, pale hazel eyes watchful behind thin wire glasses. He looked out of place in this relaxation room, but Nick supposed that he'd look perfect in a surgery room, or laboratory. His nametag, slightly visible behind the white coat, proclaimed him as 'Martin Schlaussman'. Come to think of it, he did look a bit German.

"The surgery has been done." Schlaussman stated, emphasising his words a little too much to have been born in Britain.

Nick, however, didn't concentrate on the man's roots, parentage or ancestry. He didn't hesitate to ask the question all of them had in their minds.

"Is she… okay?" He asked, his voice hoarse from worry. Schlaussman gave him a superior look, and Nick wanted to punch him for it. The doctor paused, and left it too long to be polite.

"She is alive." Was all he replied, in a tone that made Nick want to rip his head off. Schlaussman seemed to read his mind, giving the professor a hard look. He let his gaze drift away, and allowed it to land on Stephen, who shifted uncomfortably.

"But she is sleeping off the anaesthetic. You should come back in some hours." He suggested dryly. Nick realised that the man did not really care if Jenny lived or died and that hurt. To think that, to someone else, her life was just a part of a job.

At this last sentence, Stephen approached his friend rather cautiously. He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, spiking it up even more than usual. Schlaussman gave each of them a very dark look, before walking out of the door. Connor watched him go, an eyebrow raised in disbelief.

"Come on, mate." Stephen offered softly. He had only seen Nick torn up like this twice before. Once with Helen and the other time when he claimed that someone called Claudia Brown had gone missing. Absolutely broken.

"I just…" Nick mumbled incoherently, unable to finish his sentence. Even he did not know what came next. Stephen nodded understandingly.

Nick allowed his best friend to steer him out of the ARC, followed by Connor and Abby, the latter of whom was leaning into the former for comfort. Abby looked absolutely shattered, and Connor did not look much better. Nick went with the rest of them into the pickup. _His _museum pickup truck, if he could be bothered to acknowledge, but Stephen clearly thought he was incapable of driving, as he was demoted to the passenger seat. He sat there, listless, as Stephen started the engine. It gave a throaty grunt, as if being forced to do something that was very hard work, before purring into life.

As they drove out of the compound, Nick could not shake off the feeling that he had forgotten something that was very important. He knew what it was, of course. _Jenny _should be here. She should be sitting in the back with Connor and Abby, and he should be driving with Stephen next to him. On their way to a new anomaly.

It was all _wrong, wrong, wrong._

They pulled up outside Cutter's house, a rather big place. He would much rather have a cottage somewhere, but he hadn't got around to selling his and Helen's marital home yet. Even when Stephen had completely stopped, he did not get out, still in a daze. With a sigh, the technician climbed out, and yanked his best friends door open.

"Come on."

He all-but frog marched Nick to the front door, rummaging around for the keys in the Professors pocket when he couldn't find them. Eventually, though, Nick was in the house. He sat down heavily on the sofa, features creased in a soft frown. Stephen crouched in front of him.

"Look; I'm taking Abby and Connor home. They're worn out. I'll come back for you about…" The young man looked at his watch quickly, "Half eight. That's six hours. Try and get some sleep." He advised. Slowly, he rose to his feet, and left the house, casting Nick a concerned look before he slipped away. He shook his head as he walked back to the pickup. Damn Nick. He felt things way harder than he should. Just a few days ago, he and Jenny had been like sharks at each other's throats about something totally unimportant, a damage report probably. Now she was probably paraplegic, if not dead, and he was utterly lost.


End file.
